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FALLEN GATES 





WILLIAM H. FISHBURN 



(Price Ten Cents) 



The Fallen Gates 
of Civilization 



--^•><:> 



By 

RE\^ WILLIAM H. FISH BURN, D.D. 



-oOo- 



A Sermon Delivered in West Adams Presbyterian 

Church, Los Angeles, California, 

May 19, 1918 



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Published by order of the Session. 



The Fallen Gates 

Of Civilization 



Neh. 2:13, "I went out by night 

and viewed the walls of 

Jerusalem, which were broken down, 

and the gates thereof were consumed 

with fire." 



How the ancient Hebrew did love Jerusa- 
lem, the Holy City ! He fell on his face in rap- 
ture when he beheld, standing on a mountain 
top, his temple, a vision of gold and marble, 
reflecting the first flash of the morning sun 
from its shining pinnacles! 

''Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole 
earth, is Mount Zion, the City of the Great 
King," sang the opening chorus in Solomon's 
Temple three thousand years ago; and the 
antiphonal chorus, led by the silver trumpets, 
sent back the answering song: "Let Mount 
Zion rejoice ! Let the daughters of Judah be 
glad !" 

For hundreds of years, for nearly five hun- 
dred years, the historians say, the city of Jeru- 
salem grew great and rich, and the glorious 
temple stood there on its hilltop saluting the 
morning sun. Vast wealth accumulated. Tar- 
gets of beaten gold hung massively on palace 
walls. There were chests filled with jewels of 
price. There were treasures of ivory. Silver 
was as plentiful as stones in the city streets. 
Jerusalem was a prize. It was crammed with 
rich booty. It was tempting to the greedy 
eyes of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. It 
was a city to be looted. It was a storehouse 
to be pillaged. 



And Nebuchadnezzar came upon it with his 
strong army. He besieged it. He conquered 
it. He filled his wagons with the wealth of 
it. He beat down its twenty Gates with his 
battering rams. He broke down its walls of 
stone. He burnt with fire its temple, its pal- 
aces, its mansions, its homes, its houses of 
merchandise. 

He found a city of beauty. He left it flat- 
tened down to the ground, — a smoking ruin. 
He put its people in chains and carried them 
away as captives. 

This Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was 
the Great Red Hun of thousands of years ago, 
the pre-historic Hun, — and his soldiers were 
the Huns of Old Testament times, murdering, 
pillaging, looting, ravishing, burning, destroy- 
ing, enslaving, — turning fine silk into sack- 
cloth, turning beauty into ashes. 

For fifty-two years after this fiend-man had 
wrought his will upon it, Jerusalem remained 
a ruin. Then a Temple was built to take the 
place of Solomon's Temple. The Temple stood 
in the midst of broken walls and fallen gates 
for seventy years, and then Nehemiah came, 
Nehemiah, the man with a vision, Nehemiah, 
the man of dauntless courage, — and inspired 
the people to rebuild the broken walls and to 
lift up the fallen gates. 

It was an evil day for Jerusalem when her 
walls were broken doAvn because the broken 
walls made her defenseless before her enemies. 
But there are some separating walls that 
ought to be broken down, that ought to be 
removed forever, and that must inevitably be 
removed before our civilization can become 
truly, '*A Parliament of Man, a Federation of 
the World." 

We of the United States can never again 

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think of ourselves as a walled-in people, as a 
separate people living here in our own quiet 
corner of the earth and looking out for no- 
body but ourselves. 

The walls between the great Republics, 
America, France, England, Belgium, Italy, 
China have gone to pieces and the nations 
that believe in "governments of the people, by 
the people and for the people" are beginning 
to see each other eye to eye and face to face 
as a great Brotherhood. 

It will be a good thing when the wall be- 
tween labor and capital shall be broken down 
to be built up never again. 

It will be a good thing when the wall be- 
tween religious sects which, down in the bot- 
tom of their hearts, believe in the same God, 
in the same Holy Spirit, in the same Christ, 
shall be broken down, shall be ground into 
fine dust, shall be blown away by God's great 
purifying winds — and every believer in our 
Lord shall be to every other believer in our 
Lord Jesus as a brother unto brother. 

The walls that separate believer from be- 
liever are becoming so thin and transparent 
that bye and bye a child will be able to over- 
throw them with its little hand. These walls 
are not defenses but menaces. They hinder 
more than they help. 

But the walls about Jerusalem were neces- 
sary. They were a defense. They prevented 
the wolves from devouring the sheep. And it 
was a good day for Jerusalem when Nehemiah 
came and awakened the people to rebuild the 
walls and to set up the fallen gates. 

There is no doubt that when Nebuchadnez- 
zar came down upon Jerusalem with his hosts 
of armed men, the citizens asked, "Why does 
God permit this? If God is God why is our 

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repose disturbed ? Why is our pleasant dream 
shattered? Why doesn't God interfere?" 

They asked those questions just as tens of 
hundreds of people are asking today: '*Why 
doesn't God stop the war?" **Why does He 
permit these monstrous wrongs to go on?" 
**Is there any reason for this war?" "Is there 
any God at all?" "Did it just happen?" 

Now, sirs, if you are in any doubt about the 
existence of God, you'd better get that doubt 
out of your mind ; and if you think this war 
came upon our world without any reason, 
you'd better get that thought out of your 
mind. 

God is looking on at this war and sorrow- 
ing. And there is a reason for it, a sufficient 
reason for it. 

When you get home, read the second chap- 
ter of Jeremiah if you want to know the rea- 
son why Jerusalem was pillaged, her temple 
destroyed, her walls torn down, her gates 
broken, her people enslaved. Here are the 
twelfth and thirteenth verses of the chapter, — 
"Be ye astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be 
ye horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith 
the Lord. For my people have committed 
two evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain 
of living waters ; and they have hewn them 
out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold 
no water." 

And verse 19 reads : "Thine own wicked- 
ness shall correct thee, and thine own sins 
shall rebuke thee." 

Read the chapter at home and think about 
it, and you will be sure, jut as I am sure, that 
it is not God who is smiting us with a scourge, 
but that our own sins, our own remissnesses, 
national sins and personal sins, are smiting us 
in this war with a whiplash that draws blood. 

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Don't you imagine for a moment that this 
war is an accident. Don't you imagine for a 
moment that God has forgotten us. God is 
pitying us. God is trying to compel us to set 
up again in their places the Gates that are 
broken down, the Fallen Gates of Civilization. 
Don't you imagine for a moment that God is 
going to let the world go on to destruction. 
This war is designed to save it from destruc- 
tion, to save it from destroying itself, to turn 
it back from the slippery incline down which 
it has been rushing at a great speed for many 
a year. 

Do you believe that men can go on age after 
age and defiantly break the good and holy 
laws that are written in this dear Book and 
never be called before the bar of jutice and 
never be made to pay the penalty? 

Do you believe that our own America that 
men are dying for, and that you would be 
willing to die for and I would be willing to 
die for,- — do you believe that our America is 
able to lift up clean white hands, and that it 
would be found guiltless before God? Is there 
no sin in America that needs to be scourged 
out of America? Are not there some Fallen 
Gates in America that need to be lifted up and 
repaired ? 

Has not the Gate of Reverence fallen in 
America, reverence for God's Name, reverence 
for God's Book, reverence for God's command- 
ments, reverence for God's house, reverence 
for God's Day? 

Has not the Gate of Justice fallen down? 
Is not Justice flaunted in her own temples? 
Does not a slobbering, maudlin sympathy set 
free bad men and bad women as if there were 
no laws written in our statute books? 

Has not the Gate of the Family Altar 



Fallen? Who is thinking about Family 
Prayer? Who feels nowadays that Family 
Prayer is the biggest, sweetest thing in family 
life? 

Are not there liberal religions, so-called, 
that have pushed away the old Cross with its 
Gospel of blood and suffering and pain, that 
have put the mania-to-be-well in place of the 
Cross of Jesus, and that would be ready to 
blast the Rock of Ages from its everlasting 
foundations and crumble it to powder? 

Listen, sirs, to the audible speech of men 
and women in the open marketplaces if you 
would know whether sacred things are held 
in veneration ; whether there is a real fear of 
God before the eyes of a multitude of man- 
kind ; whether decency is regarded ; whether 
old age is respected ; whether God's name is 
reverenced ! 

We have erred and strayed from God's ways 
like lost sheep and we need to be brought 
back. God loves us and He is going to bring 
us back. 

The life we are living here was never meant 
to be smooth and easy. It is meant to forge 
character on the anvil of hardship, sometimes 
on the anvil of burning pain. 

Let us confess it, my people, we have tried 
to get away from discipline. We have tried 
to thrust God and religion out of our lives 
and to let go of ourselves and have our own 
way. We have grown effeminate. We desire 
softness. We wish for pampering and cosset- 
ting and indulging and petting. We have 
lapsed into softness. So did the people of the 
Great Monarchies. So did they of Greece. So 
did they of Rome. And those nations were 
blotted out of the books. 

We need to learn hardness, discipline, obe- 



dience. Professor William Lyon Phelps has a 
fine essay on "Courtesy" in which he says, 
"Military training teaches obedience, a quality 
that our youth sorely need to acquire ; we need 
to learn politeness. No other nation has neg- 
lected politeness as we have done." 

I want to say something about military 
training as a means whereby we may learn 
politeness and obedience ; whereby we may 
get rid of our fiabbiness, spiritual fiabbiness, 
mental fiabbiness, physical fiabbiness ; where- 
by we may learn to endure hardness, to take 
our punishment standing up, to be strong- 
hearted, to be unafraid. 

The school of war has its value as a maker 
of Christian manhood. It is not only a maker 
of soldiers for our armies. When you look at 
what war-training has already done for our 
young men, you cannot help giving praise to 
war-training. War-training lifts up stooped 
shoulders, pushes out a flattened chest, gives 
a spring to the step and a look of unquailing 
manliness to the eye. 

Unless we are ready to let our civilization 
go headlong into bankruptcy, we must have 
military training. Personally I believe in uni- 
versal military training. If we had adopted 
universal military training three and one-half 
years ago we could put an arm across the 
seas today and take Prussia by the throat and 
strangle her to death. Those who say: "T 
didn't raise my boy to be a soldier" ought to 
be asked, "What did you raise him to be? Did 
you raise him to be a mollycoddle?" 

I believe every boy ought to be taught the 
manly art of self-defense. I believe every boy 
ought to learn at what point the trigger is 
placed on a rifle, how to take aim at a mark 
and how to hit the mark he aims at. 



There is a line Biblical authority for mili- 
tary training. There was good red blood in 
the veins of King David when he wrote that 
battle-song in the 144th Psalm : "Blessed be 
the Lord my strength, which teacheth my 
hands to war and my fingers to fight." The 
Scottish Presbyterians have made a church 
hymn of that Psalm and they sing it with en- 
thusiasm, and that may account for the grim 
steadiness of the Scottish soldier's aim and 
the splendid virility of his onslaught. 

-In our lesson the fallen walls were rebuilt 
and the gates were lifted up and put back on 
their hinges. The walls of our civilization are 
broken and many of the Gates of our civiliza- 
tion are fallen, but every broken wall is going 
to be rebuilt and every fallen Gate is going to 
be restored to its place. Our soldiers who are 
gone to Europe and who are going to Europe 
are going as builders. They are going to 
build up the broken walls and to lift up the 
fallen gates. 

Is everybody in America standing back of 
our soldiers? Is everybody in America doing 
everything to cheer our soldiers? Is every- 
body in America doing everything within his 
power and her power to win the war and to 
destroy the Hun ? 

On the contrary there are many who, openly 
or secretly, are doing their utmost to hinder 
the winning of the war and the destroying of 
the Hun. 

Nehemiah in our lesson paid small attention 
to the hinderers outside the walls, but he gave 
some attention to the hinderers on the inside. 
He had his hinderers and also he had his way 
of hindering them from hindering. You must 
read between the lines to know what Nehe- 
miah did with the hinderer. The hinderer 

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never hindered anybody else after Nehemiah 
gave him one treatment. 

Amongst the hinderers who would paralyze 
the President's hands if they could, who 
would make this war a colossal failure if they 
could, who would put the iron yoke of Prussia 
on your neck and mine if they could, I would 
name an array of evil and disloyal persons, — 
alien enemies, profiteers, alien grumblers, I. 
\V. W.'s, slackers, spies, pacifists, cowards, 
brewers, saloons, bootleggers, those human 
coyotes who corrupt the soldier; and along 
with them I would mention agitators who 
make inflammatory and malicious speeches, 
newspapers that think evil and disloyalty in 
their hearts and print carefully camouflaged 
evil and disloyalty in their editorial lines, and 
that ought to be suppressed and suppressed 
without delay. 

Our national government has been patient, 
miraculously patient with these hinderers. 
They would not be permitted in Hunland. Let 
anyone in Germany obstruct, and that one will 
speedily find himself shut up in jail or stand- 
ing with his back against a stone wall. The 
Atchison Globe says, "In Germany there are 
practically no spies. Why? Because they 
shoot them ; and it doesn't make any differ- 
ence whether they wear trousers or petti- 
coats." 

There are other hinderers, — persons who im- 
agine that they are optimists, who will tell 
you they are certain the war will be over by 
the 15th of next month; pessimists, who break 
your heart with mournful wailing about the 
power of the Hun and the total impossibility 
of beating him. They worry and worry and 
worry. One of them was found the other day 
after a splendid Allied victory with his head 

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bent down, worrying. His companion asked 
him what he was worrying out and he replied : 
"I'm worrying about what I'm going to be 
able to worry about after the war is over and 
there's nothing left to worry about/' 

There is another group of hinderers that it 
would not be fair nor right to leave unmen- 
tioned, and they are to be found amongst our 
United States Senators and Congressmen who 
let things go all to sixes and sevens until some 
calamity is impending, and then make frothy 
speeches and ofifer fatuous resolutions, and 
beg excitedly for the opening of a series of 
"investigations" to find out why things hap- 
pened just the way they happened. 

I suppose you will admit that our present 
Congress is not composed entirely of strong 
and great men. There are few of them who 
would be worth painting by an artist, though 
I imagine a number of them might be the bet- 
ter for a little white-washing. 

Thinking of and speaking of the hindered is 
not a pleasant task, but thinking of and speak- 
ing of the Helper is a pleasant task, and 
thanks be to God, in the setting up of the 
Fallen Gates the Helpers are far, far in the 
majority. There are thousands upon thou- 
sands, there are millions upon millions, who 
are willing Helpers. They are to be found in 
every section of society. 

In our lesson of today it is written, "The 
nobles put not their necks to the work of the 
Lord." Our nobles today have put their necks 
in the yoke of military service. This is not 
a rich man's war; it is not a poor man's war. 

Both the rich and the poor of America, both 
the rich and the poor of the Allied Powers are 
in it, and in it up to the neck. 

The very flower of England's men went to 
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France the first year of the war, and the vast 
majority of them are there now, sleeping un- 
der the sod, between the Channel and the 
Vosges. "More than a million of Frenchmen 
and Englishmen," says Mr. James M. Beck, 
**are sleeping their last sleep in the now for- 
ever sacred soil of France." 

Everyone ought to feel the hurt of this war. 
Some of us are shut out of actual participation 
in it by infirmity, by age, — but all of us may 
be helpers. There are some who are shut out of 
actual participation by cowardice. But there 
are some cowards who know they are cow- 
ards and who pray God to give them courage. 
We were told quite recently of a young man 
in Pennsylvania who had straw-colored hair, 
and who requested the prayers of the pastor 
and people, in order that he might become red- 
headed. He had heard that red-heads were 
brave fighters and he was praying the Lord 
to give him red hair so that he might go forth 
and fight the Kaiser. He wanted to be a 
helper. 

We are living, sirs, in the time of testing, 
the times that try what sort of stuflt we are 
made of. We are passing through the period 
of blood and iron. Talk will not win the war ; 
sermons will not win the war; but money will 
greatly contribute to the winning of the war. 
We have been asked for money. We are go- 
ing to be asked for more money, and then af- 
ter that for more money, and as long as our 
dear boys are "over there" we are going to 
be asked to give money. 

The "Boy Scouts" are helping by button- 
holing us to buy War Saving Stamps. At the 
Malabar Street School, last week, the chil- 
dren went out, 250 strong, and paraded 
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through their school district, and sang war- 
time songs like this: 

"Sing a song of war-time, a country full of 

camps; 
Fifty million patriots buying Saving Stamps. 
See the pennies flowing in a golden stream 
To keep the soldiers going and to smash the 

Kaiser's dream." 

A man over age cannot be drafted to lick 
the Kaiser, but he can lick a Thrift Stamp, 
which is along the same line. The Dallas 
News says, "A patch on your trousers may be 
regarded as a thrift stamp." 

Tomorrow will start the week of the Red 
Cross Drive for one hundred millions of 
money. Our lesson tells us that the women 
helped in the work of lifting up the Fallen 
Gates. **Shallum, the ruler of the half part of 
Jerusalem, repaired his portion, he and his 
daughters. 

These blessed women, who are working in 
the Red Cross and for the Red Cross are real 
women. They do not belong to the clinging 
vine, coddling, sick-minded class of women. 
They are clear-headed, forward-looking, bal- 
anced-minded women, — women who are not 
afraid of danger or of death. 

The first ladies of the land, together with 
the second ladies of the land and all the other 
ladies of the land are serving, — are knitting, 
sewing, rolling bandages, making garments, 
nursing the wounded and the sick, — are doing 
their bit towards forwarding the work of the 
Red Cross. Titled English women are driv- 
ing plows and harrows ; are acting as chauf- 
feurs. It was told in one of our public prints 
that Lord Hargraves jumped into a motor-car 
in London and said to the woman chauffeur, 

14 



"Drive me to Dorchester House." The chauf- 
feur said, "All right. Get in." Lord Har- 
graves said: "I'm accustomed to being ad- 
dressed as 'My Lord.'" "All right," replied 
the driver, "you get in. I am accustomed to 
being addressed as 'My Lady.' " She was his 
social equal. 

The Red Cross will get its one hundred mil- 
lions, Los Angeles will raise its apportionment 
of three-quarters of a million. No one with 
a heart will turn away this appeal of the 
noblest work in the world. 

A letter came to me from Mr. George S. 
Fowler, the Executive Secretary of the Red 
Cross, with these words: "It would require 
volumes to tell you all that the Red Cross has 
accomplished,— the lives saved, the suffering 
assuaged, the starving fed, the homeless shel- 
tered, the heart-broken comforted." 

Let me impress it upon you today that the 
suffering peoples of Europe are looking to 
America for relief. They have a right to turn 
their pain-stricken faces towards us. They 
have a vast claim on America,— the claim of 
having fought America's battles with the Hun, 
and having protected America from the rav- 
ages of the Hun for nearly three years. 

One of the pamphlets sent out calls the Red 
Cross "The Army behind the Army," and as- 
sures us that so great is the work and the de- 
mands made upon them that "Our giving must 
shake us to the very foundations." "We must 
give more than we are able." "You have 
bought Liberty Bonds," says the pamphlet, 
"and War Saving Stamps, and have already 
contributed all you can spare to the Red 
Cross, but you must give, give, give,— give 
more and more, because if you're not suffer- 
15 



ing, you're not giving." ''Don't think of your 
giving as a sacrifice. Think of it as a privi- 
lege." ''When you give you are fighting as 
surely as if you had a gun in your hand. This 
is not benevolence, it is War. Your act is 
Valor." 

The Red Cross is helping millions. "It is 
gathering in the poor little children, wasted 
waifs of the war-swept area." "It is main- 
taining the Red Cross Canteen, that Hail Fel- 
low of a saddened world." 

Do thy share ! Do thy share ! Give as thou 
art able to give. You will be helping in lift- 
ing up the Fallen Gates of our Civilization. 
You will be helping to bring the war to a tri- 
umphant close. 

"Over the din of battle, over the cannon's 

rattle, 
Over the strident voices of men and their 

dying groans, 
I hear the falling of Thrones." 

*'Out of the wild disorder that spreads from 
border to border, 

I see a new world rising from ashes of an- 
cient towns ; 

And the Rulers wear no crowns." 



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